Restoration Magazine

Congratulations! A New Alaska Native Tribal Resource Center on Domestic Violence

AKNWRC board members are Alaska Native women with decades of experience in advocating to end violence against Native women. Board members pictured (right to left): Joann Horn (Yup’ik); Tia Holley (Inupiaq); Shirley Moses (Inupiaq); Priscilla Kameroff (Inupiaq); Lenora Hootch (Yup’ik); and Candy Keown (Tlingit). Not pictured is Nettie Warbelow (Athabascan). Staff pictured (left to right): Executive Director Tami Truett Jerue (Athabascan) and seated administrative staff person Marie Taylor.

The Alaska Native Women’s Resource Center (AKNWRC) has been awarded a grant by the Family and Youth Services Bureau, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, to serve as the first Alaska Native Tribal Resource Center on Domestic Violence (ANTRC).

“Such historic and long overdue support upholds the federal government’s trust responsibility to assist Indian tribes in safeguarding the lives of Indian women,” said Tami Truett Jerue, Executive Director, AKNWRC. “We are honored to have received this award and excited at the potential the new resource center provides for Alaska Native villages and women.”

The Indian Law and Order Commission report sent to Congress November 2013 stated that Alaska Native women are over-represented in the domestic violence victim population by 250%, and while Alaska Natives represented 19% of the state population, they are 47% of reported rape victims. In 2010, the Family Violence Prevention and Services Act was amended to include funding for state resource centers dedicated to reducing tribal disparities in domestic violence in states with high proportions of Indian populations in a culturally relevant manner. The ANTRC is the first funding authorized under this specific federal amendment.

 

“In the coming year we will use these new resources to establish the ANTRC and offer village-based training and technical assistance.”

—Tami Truett Jerue

 

“With such support, we can address domestic violence working closely with Alaska Native tribal governments, and identify and remove barriers to victim safety and abuser accountability, especially in rural, remote Alaska Native villages across the state,” said Shirley Moses, AKNWRC Board Co-Chair and Executive Director of, Healing Native Hearts Coalition. 

Organized in 2015, the Alaska Native Women’s Resource Center is a tribal nonprofit organization dedicated to ending violence against women in partnership with Alaska’s 229 tribes and allied organizations. AKNWRC board members are Alaska Native women raised in Alaska Native Villages and have 141 years of combined experience in tribal governments, nonprofit management, domestic violence, and sexual assault advocacy. This includes experience and individual crisis, systems, and grassroots social change advocacy at the local, statewide, regional, national, and international levels.

“This funding gives us the opportunity to break the deafening silence surrounding victims and bring healing to our people with laws, policies and local responses rooted in Alaska Native voices, languages, and teachings,” said Joann Horn, AKNWRC Board Co-Chair and Executive Director, Emmonak Women’s Shelter. “AKNWRC’s philosophy is that violence against women is rooted in the colonization of indigenous nations. The solutions to ending the violence will come from our villages and people."